


Designated Babysitter

by blueberry01120



Series: Loki the Lady AUs [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol As a Crutch, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And a sober coach, Coworkers - Freeform, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Female Loki (Marvel), Loki and Thor Are Not Related, Passive Aggressive Codependency, Thor Needs a Hug, hairless cats
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:33:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25725166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberry01120/pseuds/blueberry01120
Summary: Loki prefers to get paid for babysitting Thor's bad decisions, but because some people think her sole purpose in life is to do that, there Loki's Friday night is babysitting Thor's bad decisions presented by alcohol. Though Drunk Thor reminds her of the good old times when Thor was tolerable, and Thor does look like that, so it's not all bad, is it?
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Series: Loki the Lady AUs [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865965
Comments: 8
Kudos: 56





	1. The First Time

**Author's Note:**

> The purge continues.

Friday nights toed off Loki’s heels for a breather — metaphorically; a cobbler customized her heels for a shoeless feel — but a breather from the week’s nonsense, uncorked and poured her a generous glass of Pinot Noir, dropped the needle on the luxuriating Sade record that paired perfectly with the dim table lamp light and some introspection.

Narvi and Vali borrowing body heat from her thigh and shoulder, not begging for long-term plans or blind trust like a waste of space might’ve. The “And?” to the dozen “you’ll end up single with cats” insults. Single with cats, a gorgeous glass of top-shelf wine, and pristine city view, what a terrible fate.

The doorbell would be a member of the Married Happily brigade looking for a breath of fresh air from their spoiled spawn in the guise of asking for brown sugar.

Wine placed on the key table where they’d be able to envy it, Loki unlocked the front door.

Thor’s tequila-flavored “Loki!” was not the douche siren that Loki expected.

Thor’s kick-stand Fandral could’ve stood to not look so elated. “So, you are home. Good!”

The 40-proof smile Thor dared to flash Loki burned but not as much as the chest that her palms rescued her from being crushed by. But Loki was a mere mortal with two hands instead of the four that would’ve been necessary to hold the Sequoia tree trunks for arms that tucked her into the Tom Ford _Oud_. “I always enjoy seeing you,” said Thor’s bass. “So fucking sexy.”

Loki found air over Thor’s shoulder just in time. “I’m happy you both stopped by,” said Loki. “I will see you both Monday. Have a nice—Thor!”

As Thor stole the ground from her, he felt the need to point out, “Look how tiny you are. I could break you in half. Bet you’d like that.”

Fandral winced for Loki’s glass, a casualty to Thor blindly backing up, as if it’s blood — it’s lush Pinot Noir flavored blood, wasn’t on his hands.

“Oops. I’m sorry. Someone’s gonna have to clean that up. Fandral, you’re not doing anything.”

“Actually, I really have to go. Hilde, promised her I’d be home by 11:00. She has a flight at 5:00 am,” Fandral was no longer explaining to Thor because Thor was enjoying Loki’s justified annoyance at having to squirm herself free of him back to her own two feet (“I love your pissed-off face. Should let me make it up to you,” said Tequila.)

“Well, it seems you have this all under control—”

“Fandral, he is wasted,” she whispered/hissed as Thor struggled his shoes off having taken the suggestion of the rack of them.

“Like a frat house on a Saturday night. But if anyone has the experience to deal with this, it’s you. My wife — because some of us are married—”

“For now.”

“She will not be happy to have Thor around like this. But you, it’s just you here all alone. You could use the company.” The twat was closing Loki’s door and had the nerve to wave and tell Thor goodbye.

Thor took joy in deadlocking Loki’s door despite his “I love Fandral.”

“Good for you. God. Come on. Let me get you remotely sober.”

“Don’t pretend you’re not happy to see me. I’m happy to see you. I’m always happy to see you.” His voice might’ve been a sonic eyebrow wag. “In your dresses and your skirts and your pants.”

“That about covers all clothes.”

“Your ass. I have to force myself not to look. But I’m fair. I make all the other guys not look either. And Brunnhilde. She does though anyway. I look too sometimes to be honest.” Drunk Thor retained the tactile curiosity, groping a vase, a statue, a lamp, multitasking in this moment of crass candidness. “A lot of times. But only when I know no one else is. Or that you won’t catch me. Gotta keep a copy up here for later,” said Thor with a sluggish temple tap.

The antique telescope was Thor’s next victim. “It’s what I look forward to every day. Coming in to see how you’re showing off that perky ass of yours and those legs — fuck, those legs”—the legs that Thor pointedly dragged the telescope up—“I don’t think there’s been a single day that I’ve not pictured them around my waist. My birthday wish.”

The drawn blinds of the opposite neighbors failed to interest Thor, what, unlike Loki’s legs? Amusing.

Poor Narvi was caught in the cross fire of Thor tracking back to Loki. All the poor thing had was Thor’s shout of, “Oh, right, you have a cat!” before Narvi was baked in the cradle of Thor’s arms, minding for a microsecond till the heat of Thor settled the traitor.

“You’re a right ball sack, aren’t you?”

“How rude, Thor. The term is scrotum.”

Vali scampered up to Thor in search of some of that obnoxious body heat for himself, the opportunist. Luckily for him, Thor was egalitarian and had arms to hold the entire planet.

“Cute little scrotties. When you said you had bigger balls than me, I thought it was a metaphor,” said Thor. “It really wasn’t.”

“Come drink coffee.”

“I’ll come wherever that ass wants, babe.”

Coffee lured Thor the Cat Man into the kitchen where the most valuable items were in the wine rack that the cats had Thor’s hands too full for him to shatter. He’d lost his tie in a VIP booth somewhere in Midtown, now a souvenir for a bottle girl, with the state of his hair and that gold sheen of alcohol his body was sweating out — disregarding the stream-of-consciousness about his dearly departed dog Mjolnir and dog ears, did Loki know how soft dog ears were? Ears were the soft spot of all animals, may he demonstrate with scratching at Vali’s and Narvi’s for their electric toothbrush purrs — Thor was quite the sight.

Thor’s reptilian slits for eyes widened when Loki set down a mug of coffee in front of him. He assured Vali and Narvi that he’d only be moment redirecting his hands to it, to caress it up to his mouth, and when the elixir of Thor’s life hit his tongue, heaven descended upon him. His stare chose Loki to anchor his very soul to as he tilted his mug just so clearly to spare Loki of obnoxious coffee slurping for another 12 hours as gratitude.

Thor licked the residual gloss off his lips. “My life has been missing something. I know what it is.”

“Do you?”

“It’s you waking me up with the coffee you made me.”

“A timer can do the same.”

“But it doesn’t come with you.” In the interest of not losing Narvi as he lost Vali, all patience for Thor’s missing hands run out, Thor ground his hands into Narvi’s bones while trusting his one hand with the mug. He always looked proud, but if only it were as warm as this. “You know, Loki, Father — he used to say I should marry a woman like you.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

“No. No, he did. He said, ‘Thor, you get yourself a woman like that. But not her. She’ll swallow you up and shit you out.’ Which on second thought, doesn’t sound like too bad of a fate.”

“I thought outrageously large breasts were your most out there kink.”

“You don’t know my kinks. Anything that you’d do to me — I know I’d like it.”

“Including putting on a pair of my seven inch Manolo stilettos and giving your balls a walk over?”

“Eh, just not that. Everything else, I would. Like—” A quick gulp of coffee cut him off, a stray drip of still hot coffee getting an angry meow from Loki’s poor baby.

Loki saved Narvi from Thor’s lap as Thor continued: “If you wanted to strap-up, I’d be game.”

Cramming the hairy hole between those gorgeous bundt cakes of Thor’s while Thor grit his teeth and brought out those harp cords in his neck that guest appeared during Thor’s shouting rants and his neglected cock angrily wept across his abs. Not bad.

“Tried it once. Hurt like hell. Swore to never do it again, but you, I bet you do it all the time. On all these assholes that clog up your office with thousands of flowers and send you diamonds. How many diamonds do you need? You have to have a whole jewelry store at this point. Probably more diamonds than times they’ve properly fucked you.”

Narvi had gone deadweight in protest for Loki cheaping out on verbal praise with her petting, so Loki set him down to go hide and judge with Vali.

She leant on the island toward Thor. “You act like that’s a problem. I’m invaluable. No amount of diamonds and flowers can buy me.”

“Good. I’m happy to hear that,” said the mug Thor gestured toward Loki, too empty to slosh anymore. “You’re beautiful. You, you deserve diamonds and flowers and proper fucking from someone that’s beautiful and not a twat. Someone like me.”

“I’m impressed you managed to set that up with what little of your brain is working.”

“Oh, baby, the important parts are still around. And they know that you’re an absolute smokeshow. How many times I’ve had a wank to you. I could be dead and I would remember — my cock would remember.” As tempting as it was to have a glance, Thor’s face retained Loki’s attention. “Tell me. How many times?”

“You’re going to need to—”

“—a week do you think about me when you’re touching your pussy?” The dead seriousness only added to the absurdity.

“You’ve always had a gift for loaded questions when they’re about how great you are.”

“Come on. I know you want me. Everyone does. It’s why you’re so mean to me. It drives you crazy.”

“Well, you’re sobering up.” Rather than feed Thor’s ego, Loki sought some water for help in the home stretch of getting Thor rational again.

Thor’s silhouette across the sink’s silver gave him away. He took Loki turning around as cue to immerse her in his body heat. “Loki” was murmured, a warning for the hands that decided to close themselves on her hips. The anger that usually separated them this close was nowhere to be found, only Loki’s hand holding the glass and holding off Thor’s chest with it. “I’m tired of listening to Dad—”

“He was wise when he chose to be.”

“But—”

Loki extracted herself from between Thor and the sink, but she still had Thor’s hyperfocus to lure Thor out of the kitchen, able to turn around and trust that Thor was following if only for the view.

The guest room’s lamp tapped on, so that Thor and any silly ideas remaining after the distraction of looking around could see Loki place down the glass and peel back the duvet in the least seductive way possible (which also went for her body’s own silly, swollen ideas.)

“Always playing hard to get,” said Thor, light-hearted with the confidence that like always, soon — hours he was no doubt thinking — he’d get. His method of getting his shirt off was, well, stupid considering that it was a button-down, but when you gymmed as often as Thor, as evidenced by all of… that, bi-weekly shirt replacements were considered anyway.

“Please, sit down when you—”

Thor dumped himself onto the bed and followed through on the trouser shucking — trouser and brief said the flash of lots of flesh.

There was a dildo somewhere in one of Loki’s drawers, a large, hyperrealistic dildo, that bore a striking resemblance to Thor’s cock. Striking.

Thor grappled himself under the blankets and turned his back to Loki.

“The bathroom is across the hall. I’ll leave the seat up, so don’t try to put it up.”

“Wait, stay,” Thor was saying, and he grabbed onto Loki’s wrist, hard enough to root her to the place but not to bruise. Though if her skin were feeling spiteful, it would anyway. “Talk to me. We never talk.”

Drunk Thor wouldn’t have been receptive to the graduate thesis of explanations of why that was true, and yes, Sober Thor did not talk to her.

She sighed and stepped onto the bed and over Thor to the bit of free space (in a Californian King.)

Thor cheesed so wholesomely, releasing her wrist but only after a chaste kiss to her hand in, what, apology as if those existed to Thor. “I miss when we used to talk.”

The Geologic Time Scale of epochs and eras described how long ago that’d been. Back before Loki had freed herself entirely from her chrysalis and Thor hadn’t been crowned and kinged and ascended to levels of asshole previously unknown. They’d roamed the world with T-Rexes and Pterodactyls and studied together and slept on one another’s shoulders during _X-Files_ marathons. They argued over professors and motives in history essays. They had been the antithesis of what they were now.

Normally. When Thor wasn’t alcohol with a side of human and could stand shutting up for a few seconds to hear Loki’s voice. They were only talking work, but they never talked work even at work. There were meetings, exchanges of information mostly from Loki to Thor, but they never talked. Thor never told Loki how he loathed that shithead Ryerson and also thought he resembled a malnourished turtle or how he’d been “iffy” on that deal last week but when he’d heard Loki’s little team pep talk beforehand, he’d calmed down.

“You’re my North Star,” Thor said. “Father, he used to say — when he wasn’t telling me to not fuck you or he’d fire me — which he was bluffing. That’s what I thought, but you remember he did fire me that one time. Still can’t believe he did it. He was right, but I didn’t think he’d do it.”

“Your father used to say…”

“Right. He used to say that we needed each other. I know he told us both that, but he told me that I’d only become the man he knew I would if, if I had you by my side. I’d be great, but it wouldn’t be that great. The greatest me.” Thor went quiet, and his eyelids used the opportunity to dip. He reached an arm over her stomach. “Sometimes… sometimes, I think I’m, I’m still a little in love with you.”

The operative “still” implying that there’d been a present without it in the way, that… Thor had, some day long ago, been in love with her.

That moment had passed. Actions spoke much louder than words.

Loki stroked across the blond fur on Thor’s arm, and Thor hummed a rumble, giving in to sleep.

Sleeping Thor was as familiar Thor got to her these days. Sleeping Thor had never changed. He was Sleeping Beauty, fragile in ways that waking Thor would never be. Unconsciousness being the best Thor she could get said volumes.

She slid herself out from underneath Thor’s arm, and when she brought back the Alleve to go with his glass of water, she tapped the light out.

Narvi and Vali were happy to collect payment for their earlier neglect curling up to her in bed. They cared nothing about the company in the other room, and Loki followed suit.

Her alarm clocks pawed her awake for their early morning pisses.

It would’ve been like Thor to have shown himself out to go run off his hangover, meaning there was no rush on Loki’s morning refresher.

The guest bathroom door was closed, but the point remained, there had been nor would there ever be a rush where Thor was concerned.

She left a mug of coffee on the counter for Thor while she fried egg whites and had her ankles scented by Vali.

Thor emerged in two-thirds of his suit but the entirety of that assholish terseness that made a toy soldier out of him.

“Good morning.”

As he inspected the coffee, Thor replied, “Morning.” It passed Thor’s nose and sight test. “Bitter.”

“Hm.” Loki could’ve eaten six egg whites all on her own. She’d be able to skip lunch.

Six egg whites for one it was.

Narvi stood up on hind legs to test if this version of Thor was open to petting him.

Thor bent over and rubbed his head. “Last night, I was drunk.”

“Happy to hear you’re staying away from the drugs.”

His glare had gotten itself as inhospitable as it could for Loki. Delectable. “I’m sure that I said a lot of things that I didn’t mean.”

“You sure said a lot of things.”

“And I didn’t mean any of it.”

Judging by Thor’s reaction to the coffee made exactly the same as last night, obviously.

Thor was waiting for Loki’s reply, but Loki had better priorities like eating, which Thor could’ve done, but Loki couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t have made food not to his taste. “This doesn’t change anything.”

Loki swallowed and smiled the one reserved for annoying Thor. “I was thinking exactly the same.”

After shotting the rest of the coffee, Thor did drive-by knuckle brushes on Narvi and Vali gate-keeping the kitchen entryway, and his goodbye was the slam of Loki’s front door.

And he’d wanted Loki to believe there was any love left.


	2. Second Time

Friday nights had been doing well without Fandral showing up with the alcohol-summoned, light side counterpart of Thor.

“You’re going to pay me for this,” said Loki as she let Fandral release Thor into her apartment or onto her, around her technically as Thor superheated her flesh with a bear hug that put her nose into the dip of his clavicle and haze of a thousand shots and beers. He had his tie tonight.

“I can say that Thor’s hugs count as payment—”

Thor’s mouth was doing strange-enough-f0r-Fandral-to-shut-up things in Loki’s hair.

“Okay. Uh, the next deal you want, you have my support.”

“The next two.”

Loki should’ve been sighing for how irritatingly easily Thor was jostling her around in her own home. “Fine. Two. Good night. Both of you.”

When she looked up, Thor was waiting with the warm flipside of the penetrating stare he’d lavished Loki with if she dared to cross his eyeline all week.

“Yes?”

Thor let her have herself back with a chuckle, shoe and coat rack disregarded for him to reacquaint himself with the serenity he’d corrupted. “You’re always h-home Friday night. Why?”

“Why not?”

Thor sucked his back teeth while managing to get himself out of his suit jacket. “You should go out. Have fun. You work all the, the time. S’not good to just work.”

He was openly considering the snow globe, but Loki helped him make the right decision pushing it away from his hand and giving him one of those looks that’d have gotten a glare and Thor storming off.

“Our ideas of fun may not be the same, but that doesn’t mean mine isn’t more valid than yours.”

Thor’s squinting at her didn’t get to manifest into whatever the functioning half of Thor’s brain had in mind as Vali’s nails clicking on the floor gave way to his ambush for pets that Thor, gasping “Kitty!”, scooped Vali up to give.

This Thor murmuring sweet nothings to Vali was somehow the Thor that’d skipped out on a meeting Wednesday and when she justifiably confronted him in his office about it said, “Seemed like you had it handled,” with only a half-assed glance up from the paperwork he’d should’ve had read weeks ago.

The power of alcohol.

Loki coached Thor onto the couch and brought out the TV, turning it on to some football game or the other and placing the remote at Thor’s thigh with a vow to come back. Because she had been in the middle of whipping egg yolks for a Bløtkake courtesies of late-night cravings before the doorbell had gone. She didn’t have the company of the thoughtless Spanish pop playlist but the silence that was equal amounts reassuring and disconcerting because silence with Thor, nine unfortunate times out of ten, meant trouble.

Her cake in the oven, she came out with a broom and paper towels in preparation for the broken snow globe.

Thor’s red-bottoms unconsciously splayed over the arm of the couch.

Thor was dead asleep, Narvi a hat and Vali a hand warmer on his chest.

“Where was this last week?” Loki asked them.

They had nothing to say for themselves, too pleased with their new top-of-the-line furnace.

Loki turned off the TV and left Thor in Narvi and Valis care to go rinse off the week, so much of it belonging to Thor — it was a special kind of… aimlessly infuriating that Thor had the gall to be a bastard throughout the week, no thank you in sight for Loki’s service, and then, almost innocently crash her Friday night drunk out of his mind but exponentially less hateful.

There might as well have been another person entirely blissfully sleeping on her couch. Tequila was a spell for some noble demon to possess Thor.

She let her babies siphon off heat in peace, the least bit Thor could do for free board, and left the door latch bolt weakly in the latch should they change their minds in the middle of the night or be ejected by Thor making an early escape. If only.

Her door shutting opened her eyes, according to the alarm clock, a good nap after she’d closed them.

As smart as the cats were, they weren’t closing doors.

She asked Thor, “What are you doing?”

“One of your cats, it tried to murder me,” Thor said rather hysterically. He finally found the bed, marked by the grope of Loki’s foot through the blankets. “I don’t want to lose any more hair.”

Loki’d never been stupid enough to put herself in any situations where her sweet souls would’ve attacked her, so yes, she was muting a laugh. Like she had when her brother had visited in December and dared to dump Vali off his head turning it in his sleep. Her poor cold baby had made a right mess of Helblindi’s hair.

“It was fucking terrifying,” said Thor as he pulled the blankets tighter over Loki feeling them to get to the top of the bed. “What did I even do? They love me.”

Thor slipped himself underneath the covers.

“You’re not wearing your shoes, are you?”

Two thumps on the other side of the bed followed. “No.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Hm. But you love me anyway.”

“Do I?”

Her tit was briefly touched.

“Was that your—?”

“Yes.”

“I meant your arm. You can get me in the balls if you want--”

“I’ll take a rain check on that.”

“You love me. You let me in. You love me.”

“You are the CEO and chairman on the board in addition to being majority shareholder. If you walk into traffic or accidentally step into a cab driven by a kidnapper, that affects me.”

“Because you’ll be sad.” Thor’s hand scraped down the back of her arm, incessant like all of Thor, and his fingers shoved between hers to close around her palm, embracing her hand. He would be looking at her if there was light. “Wouldn’t you be?”

For all of Thor’s unwavering confidence in sobriety, a few drinks and the curtain peeled back on all the doubts Thor hadn’t left behind in the olden days like he stomped around hoping Loki believed. He meant none of it he wanted Loki to believe too.

“You’re immortal, so we’ll never know.” She took her hand back with some squirming and turned her back to him.

She couldn’t be that surprised when Thor followed her lead and encased her back in him, tossing an arm over and ignoring Loki’s warning “Thor” digging the other underneath so that they could join up on her stomach.

“Shh, sleep,” whispered the warm breath putting goosebumps from that ear down her neck.

She spited him and stayed awake in the clutch of Thor’s arms — the suits tried their damndest to make Thor less gymrat nightmare to the recovering bullied on the other side of the conference table, and feeling them, the scale of them, Loki had to give them their due — but a warm comfortable environment was hard to resist, that she discovered albeit painfully waking up to the squeeze of a tit.

Her squeezing Thor’s flexing wrist was placebo for the active call of his name.

Thor’s hand opened in time for him to not tear her tit off her body when he flinched his entire self back.

She clicked for the black-out curtains to part and let the sunrise in.

A lot of birds would’ve seen Thor’s hair as prime real estate. Thor groggily laid there, a sight with the V of skin his undone buttons and missing tie — which definitely belonged to the cats now — and hurricane of blond. The impeccable Thor. He sat up looking on the nightstand where there was no water. Not that nightstand. “Why did you let me sleep in here?”

“Right.” Loki sipped the dryness out of her mouth. “I should have wrestled your tipsy self out of the room.”

Interpreting her not using it as her being done, Thor borrowed the glass from Loki and chugged it down. He handed it back to her, empty. “Well, you could’ve tried harder.”

Would the glass have knocked Thor out or shattered and left him with a pretty gash?

The glass didn’t deserve being wasted on Thor.

She slid her satin robe on over the nightie and told Thor who was just helping himself to her bathroom. “Spare toothbrushes are under the sink like in the guest.”

“You must have lots of company.” Thor wouldn’t think hard about the fact he was the first to open the package or that Loki also kept spare toothbrushes in her desk at the office. He looked back, still squatting, and reached for the door to shut her out.

Vali and Narvi were unharmed from whatever Thor had done to provoke one of them, hiding in their beds over in the study, happy to let her pet while she waited Thor out. Years of avoiding unnecessary run-ins with Thor’s baseline annoyance had her not crossing paths with him when Thor went from her bathroom to the kitchen.

How fun to have skipped the fun honeymoon wall to wall fucking and smittenness to the contempt of too many years of marriage.

The scent of coffee she didn’t make and of… eggs and bacon — toast was it? — she had no role in either really added a certain authenticity to the old married couple atmosphere.

Narvi and Vali were sitting, alert, side by side at the kitchen entryway. They let Loki past.

Hair tamed back into a half-ponytail, Thor gave them both a cautious look, smoothing butter onto the toast on one of two plates.

Loki grabbed the mug of coffee near that plate Thor left on the counter’s opposite side. She didn’t give him the sure satisfaction of committing by sitting, hovering, ambivalent like Thor loathed. “So, have you apologized to them yet?”

Thor’s eyebrows creased. “One of them attacked me.”

“Only because you did something they didn’t like. They’re very forgiving. Like me. I’m not going to hold your sleepy groping against you.” She smiled biting into the whole grain Thor had toasted on the heavier side, that crunch going well with Thor’s mechanical chewing and blank stare on his mug.

“Coffee’s good this morning,” said Thor.

“It always is.”

Thor couldn’t resist the staring contests, had his implacable hope that one day, someday, he’d win. He wouldn’t as long as the longer Loki looked into his eyes, the more contented and wetter she got. “I won’t be back.”

Thor’s eggs were what they’d been back in college despite the one-night stands and personal chef that had been cooking them for him when he didn’t have a point to make.

“That’s good to hear. Binge drinking Friday nights is a bit passe.”

“Keep the judgment for company time. That way we’re both at least getting paid for it.”

“I have no problem doing it pro bono.”

“I do.”

“Haven’t you always? Accountability, your Achilles heel.”

“You should stop pretending you know anything about me. It will make things easier for you.”

“I disagree, but is that anything new?”

“No,” he said with that hint of a sarcastic smile. “No, it’s not.” Thor had an empty plate and after his gulp, an empty mug, both of which he lackadaisically carried over and dropped in the sink. “I’m leaving, but should I somehow by some bad luck end up at your door again, don’t answer it.”

If only Thor would be so lucky.

The cats escorted the clipped footsteps of Thor to the door he needed to slam.

Vali meowed in confusion for the pets neither of them had gotten when Loki came to deadbolt the door.

“Was it fun?” Loki asked Narvi. “Touching his precious hair?”

Narvi answered with the drag of himself against the leg of Loki ’s pants. He’d enjoyed himself.


	3. Third

In anticipation of her Thor-free Friday, Loki gifted herself a date with a cocky _Fortune 20_ executive who had a gait of a serviceable cock.

He’d be six months of back and forth at best, lots of handbags and the occasional trip to Paris or Dubai for rooftop dinner, and with some instruction, he’d be a reliable few orgasms. What more did anyone need in a fling?

The green sequins had her covered from wrist to mid-thigh and dipped down deep enough into her cleavage to confirm there was no bra to credit for the perk. She snapped closed the last strap on her Zanotti sandals, and as she stood up, there went the doorbell.

And the lucky ringer was Thor spread out in her doorway, propped up by himself, not Fandral.

She got herself and her dress out of the way and gestured for Thor to come in.

After Thor put one foot after the other enough to get inside, she crossed her T’s and dotted her I’s on “Keeping Thor Alive,” brewed a mug of coffee, placed only enough Alleve out to not poison Thor and hid the rest, and filled a glass of water and left it and the pills on her nightstand because face it, Thor wouldn’t have been deterred by a closed door and swayed by Loki turning on the lamp in the guest room.

Thor was in a standoff with Narvi and Vali in the living room. His sixth sense for coffee secured his hand to the mug without him looking away from them. “The key,” he said in a mock whisper, “is to show dominance.”

“Hm, is it?”

Thor looked at her face for a split-second before he regressed down to her feet and started from there on up. Hell, many hands-on touches from others hadn’t been as… thrilling. “This for me?”

Loki grabbed the faux fur waiting on the back of the couch. “I will be back… when ever. Leave the door open for Vali and Narvi if you let them in when you sleep. Don’t use the stove. Address for take-out is on the voter flier I’ve been meaning to throw out on the key table. You all have fun.”

Her babies would keep Thor entertained by feeding into his drunken Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western tug-of-war by playing aloof. Narvi would have a grudge against Thor for how he’d undoubtedly berated him for the little pawing, and in solidarity, Vali would not hold Thor in high esteem, particularly when his freakout had dislodged Vali too. After Thor assured them he’d not fall for it, he had a night of them gang stalking him like they loved to when they’d given in to the allure of a certain pair of Loki’s vintage silk Chanel slippers. Thor would lose that battle.

Loki’s date struck Loki as someone that would’ve struggled with Narvi and Vali. Yes, yes, he could appreciate Loki in her dress, but that was breathing for someone that loved women and had working vision. While he humble-bragged about reducing someone profiled in the _Time 100_ to tears earlier, could he, with his Richard Mille, all status, no symbol, waged a war of attrition against Vali and Narvi? Could he have escaped a table with Thor on “attack” with this ego of his mask intact?

Thor would’ve plated him and served him as a course. Disregarding the chokehold Thor could’ve comfortably put this self-anointed “soul eater” even with the judo and krav maga Loki wasn’t all that convinced he truly trained five days a week, Thor’s charisma was steroids for his, to put it succinctly, lack of fucks for the feelings of others, and Loki could attest to that being invincible even when Thor was hilariously wrong. She was the only person alive besides his lovely mother that could resist it. That was to say all of this bluster was just excess to a fine meal.

The cats and Thor were probably having a much better time.

For her deprivation, she went up to his penthouse and watched him turn into the babbling school boy he was trying to prove he wasn’t over some face caresses and whispers close to his ear that were a gimme, a task that all he had to do was do exactly as she told to succeed. As he surrendered on his bed, dress happy to hike up to her hips and panties moving aside, she straddled his face and gave herself the warmth and wet and suction on her clit to along with the movies at the back of her eyelids of the swollen, sweaty pecs flexing in rhythm to the crank of that overlarge hand on that overlarge cock.

After she collected her orgasm, she climbed off and left him in his daze.

Her vibrator had given her better ones, but the energy she’d saved outsourcing salvaged what would’ve been a night misappropriated.

The post-orgasm glow paled in comparison to the relief of, at the end of the suspicious order, the back of Thor’s head peeking over the couch. Thor looked back away from the _Transformers_ cartoon reruns. He had no shirt on. “You’re back early.”

Narvi was under one hand, and Vali was under the other.

Thor’d lost his pants along the way too.

Loki annoyed Narvi a bit lifting him up to make room for herself. She apologized by letting him have her thigh. “How do you figure?”

“That’s not the kind of dress you come home before sunrise in. Not if he had any sense. And he had to because you wouldn’t have worn it if he didn’t.” The gloss in Thor’s eyes said there was still a few more beers than the legal limit flowing around in him. “One pump chump?”

“Nope. I left satisfied.”

“How?”

“I know you don’t like to make it known, but you’re creative, Thor.”

“Well, I don’t wanna know anyway. Personally”—drunk or sober, those always preceded Thor’s highlights—“I don’t think you should’ve gone on the date in the first place. I’m here. What do you need to go out with some prick for? A lay? I’ve got a cock, and I, I know how to use it.”

Loki returned last week’s favor on what was undoubtedly Thor’s fifth or sixth cup of coffee, again, tasting no different than how she’d made it the first time, but Thor knew that. “Why are you here? I thought you weren’t coming back.”

“You know. I was just… saying things.”

“You were just saying things?”

“Yeah. Like I always do,” he said, bumping Loki’s arm, not her tit this time, with his knuckles. “I didn’t mean it.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. I was… bullshitting. I was… I don’t know. You know too.”

“That clarified things.”

Optimus Prime was making one of his episodic rousing speeches that Loki’d always suspected Thor’s father took notes on.

“I’m gonna be him as a dad,” said Thor.

“I thought you wanted to be a better father than Odin.”

“Dad was good. He just… he just had his problems,” said Thor. “Anyway, tell me about your date.”

“You said you didn’t want to hear about it.”

“Changed my mind. What was he like? Was he blond?”

“He was like… Fandral but on the browner side of blond. You’ve met him actually. He’s a client’s client.”

“What makes him better than me?”

Loki’s eyebrows course corrected Thor.

“I mean — better for you to you, not better than me. He’s not better than me. I know that. No one’s better than me.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps, he’s not an utter pillock to me, and when he asks me, ‘How are you?’ he’s not doing it because his latest therapist has suggested him getting to know the people around him on a personal level.”

Flickers of sober Thor tried to fight past the alcohol to be properly irate. However, Thor en drunk could only manage annoyed. “There’s nothing wrong with going to see a therapist. My therapist, they’re — this one, I think they might be the one. She’s, she’s good.”

“That was the wrong interpretation of that statement which was meant to demonstrate that you never talk to me on a personal level. He literally ran down 30 flights of stairs to intercept me and ask me my opinion on a book he’d seen on my shelf when he stopped by my office to drop off a gift—”

“What did he get you?”

“A vintage Louis Vuitton tote full of specialty tulips.”

“I knew it was flowers. You say you don’t like flowers—”

“I said they didn’t sway me.”

“—but you do. You love flowers. I’ve never given you flowers. That’s why you don’t like me. Diamonds too. Stupid me, I thought you liked my company, but no. You want flowers and diamonds.”

Narvi jumped down with a meow when she stood.

With a cant of her head, she asked, “Where did you get the odd idea I liked your company?”

Her heels had a tripled echo, two pairs of the tap of paws and Thor’s suspenseful stomp.

Thor fell back onto her bed and propped his head up in the basket of his hands to shamelessly watch as she unclipped her gold studs, unfastened the gold knot necklace, undid the straps of her heels. Like a baby duck, he dutifully collected all ten foot, 1000 of himself to plunk down on the lid of the toilet as she wiped off the Salem witch burgundy. “Make-up doesn’t really do a lot for you.”

“That’s not a compliment, Thor.”

“A ten is a ten is a ten. Seems like a lot of work when all it does it make you look evil.”

Loki rubbed the cotton ball of toner on. “That’s not an adverse outcome.”

“Right. Just making the outside match the inside.”

Loki reached back and unzipped her dress. “Now, that’s more like a compliment.”

Thor didn’t attempt to try to not look like he was staring. He was invested in the after of Loki taking her dress off like he’d never seen a woman naked, let alone hundreds. It’d been an eon since he’d seen Loki, and he had to be dying to know if her body was the Portrait of Dorian Gray to his ever improving one.

She was happy to disappoint him getting her dress from around her ankles. She let Thor silently enjoy what hard work looked like from the other side for once in her lace thong, giving him a full view of an ass aerobics had exalted when she turned the shower on. She left the thong on the floor.

That might’ve been the straw the broke the camel coming into the shower behind her’s back. Thor had never taken teasing well.

She turned as Thor was sliding down the wall to sit, slicking her wet hair back away from her eyes. “I didn’t tag you as a voyeur.”

“I said anything for you.”

“Fine. You can stay. Make yourself useful.” She handed him down body wash. “You have the legs.”

Who needed a loofah or konjac sponge to exfoliate when there were Thor’s fingerprints? Neither of those came with the frequent, unnerving glances up or the heat that surged up the insides of her legs and thighs or obviously, the cock passively throbbing against her leg. Thor also decided that Loki’s ass qualified as leg and cupped his hands around that and tried eking a reaction out of Loki brushing a finger so rough the foam didn’t stand a chance dulling the resistance of it in the creases of her asshole.

He would’ve gone for pussy if Loki didn’t step forward and tell Thor, “Soap does not go on the inside.”

“’Course not.” Thor rose above her. As he gripped the base of his cock, he said, “This does.”

That was cute. Thor was, bedraggled, more brass than blond. He was present in an intangible sense that he never was anymore.

She was the last woman on earth Thor’s cock had not seen the insides of, and this, all of it, wasn’t a coincidence.

“Enjoy your shower wank. Remember to turn it off when you get out.”

“You’re no fun, Loki.”

“I’m really not.”

Thor would be leaving biological abstract art on her shower walls for an emergency phone call to the housekeeper tomorrow. An extra generous tip and some exasperation about “thoughtless guests” would spare her of a sudden resignation, which would be reimbursed by Thor the next time that he needed Loki to reorganize her day to charm a rogue client. Not lunch, no, but standing-in in that auction in three weeks for one of Coco Chanel’s cross-body bags, that would do.

As pliant as Thor looked lying in her bed, she’d save that for when Thor was particularly annoyed and rigid and sober.

She freed her hair of the towel, and the bit of eye Thor’s eyelids had showing slid over to her.

Thor patted the bed he’d left for her. “Hm, why are you wearing clothes?”

She in her nightie confirmed that Thor was practicing what he preached. “In case some nuisance shows up to my door in the middle of the night.”

A call of lights covered Thor in black. No darkness canceled out the heat Thor’s body poured out, and when Thor stuck her chest against his, she didn’t embarrass herself with any surprised sounds and could give him the proper scoff as he pinpricked her shoulder with his beard, humming a bass line that vibrated her to the bone.

“I’ll take care of any nuisances that show up,” Thor said against her lips. “Can’t have someone wasting your time.”

“You actually care about my time?”

“Always care about your time. Your time is my time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You should.” Thor’s exhale went somewhere above them as sleep started to overcome him. “You should.”

The drunk mind spoke what the sober mind believed. Sober Thor liked to admit his candidness with the casualness of a shoulder shrug. “I have nothing to hide,” he repeated ad infinitum, smugly throwing it in Loki’s face when she dared to drift off the cowardly path of unemotional, boring facts, like there wasn’t great irony in that — a lie about the truth. Contrary to Thor’s opinion, feelings were things.

There were influential things, vulnerable things, things that Thor thought ignoring erased. Thor was truthful and feared nothing. When did the lie stop working on himself?

Loki didn’t need to push-pin a timeline onto the cork board of her study to see the overlap with the transition of one Odin through the veil. Thor’s dams had cracks.

Loki’s flexibility didn’t obligate her to be putty, but it was enjoyable to plug one or two of them with her fingers as Thor’s darned emotions trickled through the others. He’d been so adamant that she’d been unnecessary, but Thor was stirring awake clinging to her, morning sequoia idling in between her thighs.

“Fucking hell,” Thor mumbled as his sense of touch set as bleak a scene as his eyes would’ve had there been light. His hands felt up her back and stopped at the first skin of her shoulder blades.

“Oh, that feels like it hurts,” Loki said.

Thor yanked himself from around her and let cooler air rush in against her. “Do I have to fucking send it on company stationary?”

“ _To Loki:_

_Let me cry myself to sleep alone when the alcohol forces me to confront my emotions_

_-Thor Odinson, CEO & Chairman”_

“Perhaps, you should. I have a blank space on my wall that’s in need of some interesting art.”

Thor had been in her bedroom enough to wander around in the darkness without breaking anything with his cock.

The bathroom light revealed him, ridiculous, raging pink cock and all — and Vali and Narvi lounging at the end of the bed — before Thor’s glare shut the door.

Thor streaked by the kitchen entryway in his boxers and returned in his suit recovered from where he’d taken it off in the living room. He contemptuously deigned the cup of coffee Loki left him with his mouth. “I did you the favor of throwing out the toothbrush I’ve been using. Because this — last night was the last time.”

“That sounds familiar.”

There was humor Thor was holding back stumbling over himself to prove why this actually was the last time. “I—”

“There’s a clear solution here. Stop drinking.”

“I’m not asking for your advice. I’m telling you what you need to do.”

“As the reactor here, I don’t need to do anything if you, as the prime mover, would decide to stop being drunk.”

“I don’t know how you drink, but I’m not setting off to get drunk. I’m drinking like any adult is entitled to, and because of how the body works, I get drunk.”

“Evidently, you don’t know how to stop drinking before you get drunk, so a simple solution would be to not drink at all, or maybe, ask Fandral or one of your good time buddies to tell you ‘no.’ But that’s asking for a miracle.”

“Maybe, you’re right. I should stop drinking if being around you isn’t hell when I’m drunk.” Thor shoved his mug across the counter toward her, expecting she’d take care of it now that he was leaving. “I come? Put me in a cab. ‘Nuisance’ solved.”

Drinking to get drunk but not drunk to forget. Loki would keep that in mind.


	4. Never Again

Unscheduled knocking on her office door was a thrill.

When that heralded a bouquet of lilies and a bag in that subtle matte “fine jeweler” finish, the chance of firings simultaneously skyrocketed and tanked.

The lilies nestled around a note, transcribed by the florist.

“ _Like your perfume,”_ said… Thor.

Thor on behalf of Tequila had also wandered into an antique jeweler, one of Loki’s favorites. The bracelet box opened, and a heavenly chorus conducted the shimmer of diamonds, clearer than a Stavangar sky.

Loki had to shut the box in order to catch her breath.

To hell with sanity when she had a wrist that this beauty suited. She could practically see her future staring into the depths of the diamonds, her smiling, contented, no reports to correct, no associates’ self esteems to break and rebuild. What a future that’d be.

She could smell it, the second afternoon glasses of Pinot Noir, vintage of course, in the place of the coffees and the Armani beaten dead. Thor’s watches would’ve had her believe Thor didn’t know a good piece of jewelry, but Loki’s wrist proved otherwise.

Thor’s eyes couldn’t stop marveling at his own work beside her. He restrained his back-patting till after the conference room had cleared, hanging back without feigning some other reason but his gift. “You… got the bracelet.”

“A work of art. You should be proud.” She lowered her wrist to her side. “The other diamonds and flowers I’ve gotten pale in comparison.”

“It was meant to be a joke.”

“Well, the real you had an excellent sense of humor.” She left.

Thor left with her. “’The real me’? If anyone’s not the real one, it’s me when I’ve drank an entire bottle of vodka by myself.”

An entire bottle Thor had said without flinching. And him continuing on was saying aloud what he’d handed to her on a business card: “I am an alcoholic.”

“Fake you, real you, regardless, I am quite receptive to more jokes.”

That annoyed Thor off to his office to undoubtedly long for Friday night when he could give his emotions an alcohol enema. It’d have been more concerning if it weren’t pathological and couldn’t be solved if Thor genuinely opened up to his therapist instead of practicing his smile at them for the hour and under-handing not quite lies back. It wasn’t Loki’s responsibility to micromanage Thor’s emotions, but Thor was an abandoned nuclear reactor, and for all of the bullshit that Loki had deflected from him, she didn’t deserve to have to deal with the fallout.

She deserved the real Thor who bought her a diamond bracelet and lilies for the associates and analysts that found themselves lucky to be in his office to be pushed off-kilter.

When Friday night came and went without incident, she laid the bracelet to rest in the box and placed it in her safe.

Narvi, Vali, and her had a quiet night’s sleep.


	5. Cheat Day

Classic Thor, inviting himself along on a trip for client maintenance in Abu Dhabi to split their adoration and respect de facto of his overbearing maleness.

In a twist, their offer to arrange alcohol for him — the law everywhere simply suggestions for the lucky — shook Thor’s head and had him pouring another glass of that wretched rose water.

“Not allowing yourself a cheat day?” Loki asked.

Thor laughed threateningly through his smile. “Don’t worry about me.”

With pleasure. Loki worried about herself and the Friday night that now had access to a bath fit for an absolute monarch and gourmet ferried to her mouth at the twitch of a vocal cord. Together they dulled the lack of her babies, her sweet kitties keeping her brother Býleistr company in his dual holiday/home-sitting.

Býleistr comforted her with pictures of them crouched quite perturbed by the Monopoly Man top hats and jackets while the bath gave her lavender bubbles and the trill of jets.

The door bell chimed so vindictively.

Room service had their own key. They’d also have had food for the suffering of her leaving the aquatic paradise for an admittedly not terrible terrycloth bathrobe and matching slippers.

She was not pretending to be pleased to see Thor.

Thor didn’t seem to care. He owed that to the alcohol he’d taken the client up on by the smell of it. “You’re wet.”

“Keen observation,” Loki said. “I thought you were staying away from drinking.”

“But he had a bottle of vintage Patron. I had to have some.”

“Some?”

“Some. He had a few glasses — one — before we emptied it.” Thor sighed, seating himself on one of the couches.

Loki poured Thor water from the pitcher and placed it in his hands because her bath would not wait forever. “Well, have a few glasses of water, as many as you want.”

The water held no grudges for her abandonment, as warm and embracing as it’d been.

“Ooh, you’re taking a bath.” Thor had welcomed himself into the bathroom, lording his even greater height over her and the bath. His attention span got over the victory quickly, and he was lowering himself down onto his knees, bringing his wry mouth closer. “Good idea.”

“Perhaps, you could trade in the alcoholism for compulsive bath-taking. Just a suggestion.”

“I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not.”

“No, you just drink as a panacea for your issues.”

“What issues?” Thor’s laughter was defensive. “Unlike you, I realize I don’t have a lot to complain about. My life, it’s… great.”

“That’s unarguable,” she said, and her arms pillowed her chin on the bath’s edge, almost nose to nose with Thor. “You’re The Man. What you’ve got, everyone wants.”

“And you don’t understand.”

“I do. Perfectly. As someone with what a lot of people want too, I know that feelings are perception, and perception isn’t an objective mirror.”

“I pay someone for this, and it’s not you.”

Loki drew a streak of bubbles on Thor’s cheek. “I do volunteer work on occasion.” She rested her back against the bath’s wall and let Thor have his space to decide to fight or flight. Or freeze. “If only you’d had the extra one glass. Disregarding that it was probably for the best — even though you’re not an alcoholic — I’ll bet the real you laid at the bottom of it.”

“I am the real me. The only difference is I don’t call you out on your bullshit because I’m too fucked up to care.”

“Or you have the courage to admit to yourself how reasonable I really am.”

“It’s called being a horny drunk. I couldn’t make it more obvious.”

“You mean how great your tastes truly can be? The lilies, the diamonds, the appreciation of my endless assets. He doesn’t treat me like I’ve the plague, likes talking to me, and has a massive cock he’d love to lend to me. A living dream.”

“The drunk version of me is your dream man. That feels right.”

“You say drunk, I say real.”

Thor glared before he rearranged himself to be sat against the bath without the temptation of her. “Where are your cats?”

“They do grow on you fast, don’t they? They’re playing dress-up with my brother and plotting on how they’ll kill him in his sleep.”

“Do you want kids?”

“I have Narvi and Vali. The upkeep for a Sphynx cat, let alone two, rivals that of a human child. I don’t need kids.”

“So, you want kids, but you don’t want to want them in case you don’t have them. I get it.” Cute.

“If I have kids, I have them. I don’t think of the future in storybooks. My life doesn’t need to happen in some stepwise fashion of job then marriage then house then kids. Perhaps, tomorrow I will decide I want a baby, and I will borrow the ingredients from some handsome stranger in a restaurant. Who knows?”

“You’re not going to go get pregnant by some nobody.”

“If he has the requisite genes. I don’t need someone interfering—”

“That’s why you pick someone you love. It’s like… a business partnership.” Thor murmured quietly like he didn’t care if she heard or not, “Like us.”

At the 6 to Sober Thor’s 1 and Drunk Thor’s 10 was Broody Thor.

“You should go lie down on a soft surface,” said Loki as she comforted Thor with a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure the locomotive fuel filler in that vintage Patron will do a number on you, and you will want to be in relative comfort.”

Thor turned his head, putting her in his periphery. “And you’re going to make sure of that?”

It would’ve been too much for Thor to let her stew for a bit longer.

“I guess I will.” She rinsed off, ass there for Thor to stare at, and when she went for the bathrobe, it wasn’t where she’d left it on the rim but held open in Thor’s hands. A small price for Thor to pay for him to get the premium escort service Loki provided to the bedroom.

Thor had the mind to take off his shoes and then, get on the bed.

She toweled her hair dry, and Thor with eyes that she could’ve mistaken for sober if they despised her a bit more watched. “You said you were a horny drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Bittersweet.” Loki untied the robe’s sash and without its grip, the robe slipped its way to the ground. If she couldn’t resist a bit of subversion, in all of her nakedness, knee walking up the bed to lie down next to Thor who chose to look avert his gaze to the ceiling. “I don’t genuinely think drunk you is real you.”

“Hm.”

“I think that when you get drunk, you let out parts of you that you hold back when you’re sober.”

“Not saying every thought on my mind isn’t holding back.”

“Not talking about your feelings—”

“No one wants to hear about my feelings, alright? That’s what the fucking therapist is for.”

“What are you hiding, Thor? What is it that you feel that you’re so afraid of that you don’t risk feeling anything?”

“You don’t—”

“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t be asking.” She let Thor’s heartbeat reverberate into her palm. “Don’t tell me. Tell your therapist.” What the hell? It wasn’t as if Thor’s chest couldn’t hold her head with ease. “Please, because I know you aren’t.”

“Do you still go?”

That’d been the self-deprecating ace up her sleeve when Thor had confronted her a few years ago about her “skipping out on her duties” because she wasn’t around to hold his hand, her bi-weekly appointment with her psychologist. How Thor’s teeth had almost shattered snapping together in haste.

“I do.”

“Do you tell them how much you hate me?”

“Among other things.”

“Like what?” He would ask that.

“Everything you can imagine.”

“So, your father.”

“Yes, such as him. We discuss how reliant you all are on me and how underappreciated I am. How… life has… stagnated, and how simultaneously alluring and terrifying risk is now that there are things to lose. My… cats. My… everything.” Loki cleared her throat and turned off of Thor and onto the bed. “It’s simply good to have someone that wants to hear what I say and only expects monetary payment.”

The tablet on the nightstand let her turn down all the lights, the curtains not black out like hers were and letting her eyes adjust to see the world in shades of dark gray, to see Thor’s head turned toward her.

“You’ve always been obsessed with making trouble where there isn’t,” said Thor. “It’s like order scares the shit out of you. You’d rather be miserable as long as you could have something to feel bad about.”

“That’s laughably false.”

“Is it? I won that award when you interned over at JP and you accused me of sabotaging you and using my father to beat you. We were friends, and you said I was trying to screw you over.”

“You—”

“I don’t wanna to rehash that. What I’m saying is that for your feelings — for most of them you only have yourself to blame.”

“Likewise.”

“You would take it personally. But accountability is my Achilles heel. Takes one to know one, right?”

“If that’s what you want to tell yourself.”

Thor would chuckle, but the patron caught up with him and smothered his little chuckle to sleep.

All she had to say for him in the morning when he sat up and squinted down at her tangled in the blankets she’d somehow woken up underneath was: “I told you to stop drinking.”


	6. This time

Loki’s late-night reading did not stop for any interruptions, not vibrating phones, not meowing cats — not for the first few meows — and not for ringing doorbells.

The latter, in theory evidently.

Tuesdays rarely brought any company to her doorstep if they didn’t bare edible gifts, so excuse her intrigue that the nondescript mild salsa of days of the week had her doorbell ringing.

It was beer with a side of a glimpse of Thor’s chest, the buttons on the shirt he’d been wearing earlier prematurely off-duty.

That braced her for Thor’s arm around her waist and Thor drawing out, “Baby, I’m so happy to see you.”

“I don’t think I can say the same.”

“Aw, baby, you know you’re happy to see me. Look at you.” He did so and also touched her, fingers brushing over the stomach of her nightie that might’ve been tissue paper. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

“What’s the occasion for the 15 beers you’ve had?”

“No, no. I only had three beers. Four tequila shots. A mojito. Do you still like mojitos?”

“They’re fine. Wait, Thor, let me—”

Let her be lifted onto Thor’s waist. His trousers and their button cottoned and metaled Loki’s stirring clit.

“I have a fucking I didn’t give you in Abu Dhabi. I don’t know what I was thinking. Should’ve nailed you through the bed. I know you like it hard. I’m gonna give it to you hard, baby.”

“You should… get some coffee—”

“Later.” Now, was a sucking kiss that spiked Loki’s BAC but had the restrained ferocity it’d had in the stairwell that Time Never to Be Spoken About from a past life. Thor’s hand’s around her head confined her heartbeat in her ears, the irresistible arm above her ass inundating pressure to her clit that brought her teeth down hard around Thor’s chewy lip, brute-forcing her tongue to the divine light at the back of Thor’s throat.

What a fucking being beneath those clothes her hands had nothing more important to do than get rid of. The bed let a gasp out of her Thor’s mouth snatched up, greedy thing he was. Loki was immersed in the shade of Thor, entirely underneath the heavy, hands-over-open-flame heat of Thor’s muscles. It retreated down to her tits Thor unveiled for him to suck, bleary-eyes looking, hoping for the lip she bit to slip and free the gimme sounds, but Loki let her eyes have a rest and soaked in the pleasure-pain of the grip of Thor’s mouth and teeth.

Thor’s hand passed the lowest of Loki’s lower stomach — and Loki’s clit found the Promised Land, the rough fingers mercilessly stroking her. She expected to flinch when Thor slipped lower, but Thor’s thick finger met little resistance to a “fucking hell” from Thor. She was in time for the taste testing of Thor’s finger.

Thor regretlessly pulled out his cleaned finger, now wet with his own spit, and brought the slickened fingerprints to her clit for some slow, laborious rubs.

The bed shuddered as Thor kicked his damned pants out of the way of his hairy thighs for fucking and that swaying, weighty cock. It was a silky kiss at her hole — and a hiss from Thor — that rose to her clit, dwarfing Loki’s teeny, tiny hard-on, before reversing course back down.

“Don’t you want to use a condom?”

“S’been fucking months. All I’ve got is a hard-on.”

More foreplay would’ve minimized the ass-burning filling that would serve as a pushpin for this moment where she finally, finally had Thor inside of her. Inch by-clit-tugging inch. Thor’s eyeballs sought shelter from the final frontier behind the shades of his eyelids, and they twitched, prepared to open, but Thor couldn’t risk this vanishing before his balls had their say against her ass, not like the dreams and the fantasies Loki could’ve gotten out of him right then.

The desperate moan she got out was already a bit of a struggle. It sufficed in popping open Thor’s eyes to complete the helpless set of his parted lips and straining brow. He kissed her, both their eyes staying open and locked.

She found the primest real estate on the meat of Thor’s shoulder blades. “Aren’t you going to move, Thor?”

“‘Course.” He’d found all the fucking spots, hadn’t he? “You like that?”

“Deeper.”

“I’m as deep as you’ll go, babe.” He demonstrated that very, very well. “Fuck, you’re incredible. Gonna make me cum already. Cum and get you pregnant, yeah?”

The good noise was coincidental, entirely due to the fucking pounding Thor was giving her.

“We’re going to have a baby. And… and we’re gonna get married. And you’re gonna see that I’m all you need. Loki, I’m all you need, okay? I’m all you need.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” There was a shine in Thor’s eyes before he shut them. When he opened them, it’d gone nowhere but every where. “Tell me you love me.”

“Do you love me?”

Thor’s thrust in was a stop as actual Thor Tears amassed, the sadness smoothing the line between his brows to let them freely sag. There was water in his inhale.

Thor’s face disappeared into the farthest reaches of her vision but the full view of her neck and shoulder’s touch, and her ears caught the deep intake of breath that preceded the tremor of her fingers on Thor’s back. Then, Thor started sobbing.

His crying went straight to her heart literally but well, also metaphorically, the quiet corner she’d irritated him into at the mausoleum and let him hold her like this and purge the emotion he’d clenched his jaw through. They’d never spoken about it.

This was Thor opening the confessional booth window to how he needed Loki. Because he did. He needed her like he needed the water wetting her neck, the air brushing her shoulder, the blood under his skin, and he loved her for it.

Thor loved her.

Her nails dug into Thor’s skin, and he ground deep, deepest. Those “shallow” strokes and the thumb that Thor treated her clit to had her clenching for sanity, keeping a hold of it and her mind-body association higher priority than filtering sounds and words though 99% of them were four letters. Fuck. Thor.

He pulsed on top of and inside of her, too far gone for more than a pure animal groan into her neck.

She was strangely cozy like that, threatened with Thor’s full steel ton of weight but wholly subject to the flares of his body heat.

“I’m not leaving,” Thor murmured to her.

“Okay. But if I get a UTI, you have to squirt shampoo up your urethra.”

The sting of her pussy hole woke her in the dark, but it was no UTI, only the body heat silhouette of Thor removing himself from her premises.

Her legs tested if they still closed, knee skidding over hot Thor.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he mumbled.

The desk lamp exposed the fresh, pure chagrin on Thor’s face before he turned it along with the rest of him to fish for the clothes on the ground.

Thor didn’t show his face again as he left (fled).

Monday would be fun.


	7. Next Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where there's regret for regrets that aren't actually regrets

Loki’s meeting first thing in the morning held its thought for the late, “sorry”-mumbling man that sat an eon away from her and resolutely did not make eye contact. It was for the books that her suggestions and plans went unquestioned by Thor. That would’ve required engaging the blinking red line to Loki his mind had on hold, and Thor was content to talk at everyone and no one.

Clear some space on Loki’s shelves because she’d earned some trophies. First to make Thor cry during sex and first to make Thor avoid them after sex. Unsurprising that she’d be the one to topple Thor’s last unchallenged arena.

To think it likely had upped Thor’s love for her. Intuitively, one would think he knew her inside and out now; he’d sated his curiosity, moving on now, but Loki was Pandora, and Thor sure had, one could say, opened her box.

Wide open.

Thor didn’t come visit her in her office, but she could channel that Friday night energy and go visit his.

The click of her stiletto tipped Thor off.

His eyes were positively thrilled to see her. You couldn’t blame him, not in this dress. He looked back down at paperwork. “I’m busy.”

“You’re a master multitasker,” she said. The file in her hand was excuse enough to go up to and put herself just in perfume range over his desk, filling in the fundamentals like they weren’t what was being filled in. Her phone sex operator tone hint-hinted, but Loki never talked about what Thor wanted to pretend didn’t happen. Like it’d been forgettable for her.

Schrödinger’s shitty lay. 

“That’ll be all,” she told him. “Unless you have something for me.”

Thor’s brain ticked. “I’d apologize for yesterday,” he said, “but I know you wanted it too.” He paused for effect. “Even though I was drunk.”

“You initiated things.”

"You should've told me no."

“Why? Because you couldn’t keep a lid on it? You’re a practiced drinker. Hell, you could've done cost projections by hand."

"That's not the point. If there wasn't an empty bottle of tequila behind me, you would've."

"Would I have?"

"You have for 15 years."

"Are you sure there isn't a bottle too far even for you of tequila in your bin? Because you're sounding confused, very confused."

"You haven't wanted anything to do with me since business school. Before that—” He’d always have the audacity for incredulity like Loki was the unreasonable one. “Why am I telling you what you already know?"

"Oh, you mean me not picking up on you being in love with me? Forgive me. It was hard to notice when you were in the cervix of any breathing woman. Which leads me to believe you're conflating your begrudging respect for me 'holding out' with what you imagine love is like."

Thor’s knocked his knuckles against his desk for lack of a winnable fight here. "For a second, I thought you were watching over my drunk backside because you cared about me. But this is you. You only did it to get more information out of me to insult me with."

"No wonder your therapist has been so unsuccessful. You think the truth is insulting."

"The truth? What the hell do you know about the truth? You're a walking, talking lie. You fucking brag about it."

"Which is its own honesty. Look at you lying to yourself that you're not a massive alcoholic because you can't cope with how empty your life is. That's a fucking two-tier cake of a lie."

"I'm not a fucking alcoholic."

"You aren't?"

"I can stop. Alright? If I want to, I can stop."

"Then, why don't you? No more late-night visits with the enemy, no more insults." She got a look at the live feed of Thor's internal tug of war, the fighting between his jaw muscles and his brow. "Oh, right. That would mean sitting with the chilling reality that when Odin went and your wonderful mom followed and then, one by one, your pussy posse married out of coke binges and one night stands, you, the man with everything, had no one next to you that mattered."

Thor's eyes threatened angry tears that concurred. "What? Happy I'm alone just like you?"

"Well, I always had a feeling we'd end up alone — together. You might've realized that before me, liquid-encouraged you."

It’d always taken some outside help to spark wisdom in Thor. As wise as Loki already was, she was on her own to turn lemons in lemon meringue pie.

“That’s funny because I remember differently. All we are are coworkers." Thor said that deliciously coldly. There should’ve been a chilly vapor trailing between his lips. "Like you said. We should keep this professional."

"'Impersonal,'" she finished quoting for him. "Mhm. Sure."

In a demonstration of unity, Loki lavished Thor in the sight of her ass in her matte midnight black pencil skirt because he liked to see her go but loved to watch her leave more.

He could drink to the sight since he was definitely headed for that liquor cabinet mostly reserved for his company-comped brodowns and one-on-one meetings with clients. With all of the bleeding and sweating it’d done, Thor’s ego could’ve been considered one.

Loki, for one, had years and years of back pay owed by it to her.

The orgasm— _s_ because the ROI on that one, well, it was beating some of their portfolios for their clients — and the peace and quiet when her doorbell had the night off, those were freebies from him. She wouldn’t pretend she didn’t get some pleasure from talking Thor down from ledges here and there like Thor implied she did from “insulting” him, which she did when she actually was because he always deserved it, always. But Thor was chickenpox.

When you emptied the calamine lotion and only had scars from the sleepless itchy nights and thought it was over, little did you know that in your nerves, there the eternal itch was waiting for old age. A decade plus beside Thor felt like a lifetime.

Spiritually old Loki and spiritually gray Thor. “You two are an old married couple” was their tag line. “Book me a trip to Veritas,” she’d say. “What did I do in life to deserve this?” he’d say.

Thor would’ve grunted a non-word if anyone told them that these days. Ignoring Loki was his new winning strategy.

While she didn’t mind — not all, of course not — Vali and Narvi were particularly aggressive in optimizing her as a heat source in bed. She didn’t have as much surface area and Kelvin as Thor.

“Fine,” she told them. “I’ll resolve this for you for next Friday.”

It wouldn’t have been a proper Friday night without Thor now, would it?  



	8. Your Time

The Greek revival Borson-Odinson family heirloom had always had a succulent doorbell.

It was a marked improvement from 10 years ago when disapproval would’ve answered the door, the Thor caught in the first shards of sunlight, sleep hungover, shirtless, and squinting. In a croak, he asked, “What are you doing here?”

Inviting herself inside like Thor had countless times, for one. The risk of getting a foot stabbed by a stiletto was far too high for Thor to impede her. “I thought I’d drop by. See how much a miracle worker your housekeeper is.”

A veritable Jesus by the look of it. It was unchanged from how Frigga had put it together.

She disarmed her feet, slid off her coat, well, to the wrists before it was slid off of her. She didn’t thank Thor when it was Frigga, etiquette empress, that deserved the thank you.

Thor had heavy jangle in his pajamas pants. “I haven’t even had my coffee.”

In excellent timing, Loki had interrupted its steaming journey to Thor’s mouth. She let them have their moment now. “I thought there would be exponentially more empty liquor bottles decorating the place.”

The kitchen was the domestic, _Good Housekeeping_ dream, an abundance of fresh fruit in a bowl included.

She had a banana.

Thor’s back dimples enjoyed their semi-charmed life while Thor renegade cheffed. Thor’s forearm muscles showed off when Thor placed eggs and blueberry-topped oatmeal in front of her, the least he could do.

Like old business school times, they sat at a table with risk of knocking knees in the breakfast nook that Loki had to ask, “Do you honestly ever sit here?” 

A snort. “No.”

It would’ve been a waste anyway without anyone around to swoon at how Disney prince his eyes were in the sunlight there.

“Plans tonight?” she asked Thor.

“Why? Do you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She had water there, but Thor had insulted her coffee like his was liquid angel shit, so she didn’t mind if she did. It was good, yes, but more importantly, it was no different than hers. Still. “Hm. Bitter.”

“No, it’s not.” Thor, offended, pulled the coffee to his edge of the table. What an adorable man he could be. He should’ve tried it more. “It’s problem drinker."

"Hm?"

"I'm not an alcoholic. From my psychiatrist."

"I stand corrected."

"You do."

"Your trip to rehab would've been fun to flex my CEO’ing abilities, but it'd have been disappointing to have to hand it all back to you anyway."

“You have all the power you need. A title doesn’t mean anything.” When Thor stood up from his empty plate, his coffee went with him, safe in his hand away from Loki’s mean taste buds. He didn’t extend an invite to Loki to go see him shower and suit up, but Loki entertained herself with a walk down memory lane, past the photographs of the types of memories that resurfaced when her consciousness was sinking.

For all of Odin’s many faults, he’d loved the hell out of Frigga. 

In his charcoal Bond suit, Thor set down his gray briefcase to hold open her coat. He asked her about her noon meeting on the car ride to the office, absently tinkering with the engineering marvel by Rolex on his wrist. They weren’t slapfighting by the revolving doors, believe it or not, and Thor hadn’t had a shot of anything from the smell of him and his old faithful _Oud_.

Problem drinking. Friday knew it had solutions. For everyone — the needy killer whale of a client that the smoldering charisma that incidentally possessed Thor and Loki tag-teamed into satisfaction, the theoretical Loki that’d’ve had to idle in theoretical Thor’s shadow in the post-mortem argument in a corridor corner on any other day, the theoretical Thor too consumed by unrighteous rage at theoretical Loki to avoid whiplash getting up from the table.

As Loki clasped her folio, the client pardoned himself and the telltale twinkle in his eye to her. Usually, she’d already be strutting down the hall for them to catch up to when they clenched the roses between their teeth, never here for Thor to witness the “all in” that was the promise of another night she’d never forget for her to forget.

Oh, Thor found it funny, sure, but he found it irritating too.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said, “but my nights are a bit… full. As are my days.” But Loki did know a smart, pretty woman in fintech down the street whose weren’t and bandaged the client’s Friday with that phone number.

Thor kept up with her strut. “I’m tempted to fire him.”

“For what? Overconfidence? There’s no principle against asking a single woman you reasonably think you might be compatible with out on a date. You don’t let a woman like me pass you by without trying.”

A grunt. That and an elbow nudge were all that came before “see you later.”

Thor was gone and with him was the nuisance of those overconfident non-factors that’d lure Loki away from her new hobby as a door person for her own apartment.

The sound of her favorite song “Doorbell Jazz” over her keyboard keys typing out overtime emails only shut her laptop.

Thor’s shirt buttoned to the neck, and Loki’s breath in had hints of Hugo Boss, only Hugo Boss. Thor held up a bag of cat treats.

An acceptable toll for Loki to step aside and grant him entry.

“So,” she said, “what brings you here tonight? Other than your undying love for Narvi and Vali.” 

The former who, speaking of, had skittered up to scent Thor’s legs during his de-shoeing and taken up residence where Thor’d have no choice but to acknowledge him.

“Figured I’d save myself the time and skip the drinking.”

“A reasonable choice.”

Thor said, “You coming?” to Narvi, the address enough for Narvi to ascend the Great Tower of Thor to the summit of a shoulder. It was a cocktail of Thor being Thor and how many times Loki’d opened that door for him that Thor’s reaction was only to ask Vali if he was “getting in on it too?” when he knelt to scoop Loki’s coy little troll up.

The Cat Tower, formerly known as Thor, got comfortable in the den to bribe his way into Vali and Narvi’s good graces for at least a month. Thor would be around to take advantage of it too, wouldn’t he?

“So,” said Thor, “have you taken a pregnancy test yet?”

“Why would I—?” Right. “Besides it only having been a week, I’m on hormonal birth control.”

“Hm” was meant to be noncommittal, but Mojitos had already spilled those beans. “Guess I should’ve figured that.”

“Well, you were feeling very emotional, and it’s hard to think straight.”

Thor blindly held up a treat for Narvi to stretch to get. “Go ahead.”

Given that Narvi was happily munching away and he was reloading for Vali, Thor wasn’t talking to them.

“And do what?”

“Say what you need to say. It’s been killing you, holding it in.”

“What?” Loki asked. “Personally, I found it absurdly hot.”

Thor, chronic sufferer of emotional constipation, strained to believe that. 

“How isn’t it? Think of it, the duality of a big, strong man willingly baring a vulnerable part of himself.”

“We joke that tears are your turn-on, but it’s true.”

Loki pursed her lips. “Not all tears.”

Thor chose to casually superimpose his memory against Clothed Loki while Vali nuzzled his palm. 

Because Thor would’ve let them have the entire bag, Loki saved some for later Thor and not Narvi and Vali to find in the kitchen cabinet with the coffee. Not that Thor needed treats when he had heat rivaling catnip for Loki’s babies to brood on while Thor basked in the white glow of late-night _Transformers_.

The metro area of Thor’s bulge was doing nothing but teasing Loki before Loki claimed as the best seat in the house — below Thor’s neck. She got both a muted “oof” and a semi against her ass as reward.

Thor’s stare wondered what happened next, but closed mouths didn’t get fed, and his was half-wired shut without his truth serum. Her doing nothing but settling in got him saying, “You remember that comic book store we used to go to in college?”

A shrine to geekdom. Thor reached the highest shelves, and she picked through the crates. The vintage mint issues they’d found — she had them. Thor said, “Fuck off,” to that. “You’re serious?” Serious enough to divest from Thor’s lap and compel him, cats in hand, to follow her into her study where in a drawer, what was there? “Wow.”

You never heard that from Thor in that glossy color. Not in a long, long time.

“You have to frame these or something.”

“I will. When I get my lifetime home. The place that I’ll put them on the wall of and never take down.”

“I’ve been thinking about redoing the house. It’s exactly the way Mom and Father left it. As I’m sure you noticed.” Thor glanced at Narvi climbing up his bicep to his shoulder. “It’s not mine.”

By choice. They have clients with interior decorator recs. 

Vali reached a paw toward Loki suggesting to her to come closer to pet him, the brat.

“Let’s go to a midnight movie.”

She rolled Thor’s new purr machine’s ear. “When’s the last you’ve been the one of those?”

“A year ago. I went to one near the office. I bet you go all the time.”

“Not as often as I’d like.” She got the most affronted Loki from Vali when she stopped. 

If she said no, “Yes,” Thor would say to the dozen shots a bartender slid to him, at the bottom of each glass looking for the explanation of why the one person who understood him didn’t love him. Back. Love him back.

“There’s a theater three blocks west of here,” she said.

There, they and a tub of popcorn Loki’s teeth would regret tomorrow reclined away from the clots of NYU film and art undergrads and domestic pairs. They nudged knuckles grabbing popcorn, and Loki scavenged from Thor’s overflowing handfuls. Thor warmed her ear with whispers, the eternal theorist aloud, and she brushed her nose on Thor’s strawberry-flavored hair refuting, the angle prime for the fallout of screen light that pinpricked Thor’s pupils and grayed his irises.

Thor watched her too. He barely saw more of the movie. Still, he said, “It was good,” in the lobby. “Even with my rusty French.”

“There were subtitles.” She was beaten to the door hold for herself and the people behind them. “I know. I know. If you wanted to read, you’d read a book.”

Some ten years later, Thor said he didn’t mind reading the subtitles. “You just miss out on some performance when you don’t understand.”

In Icelandic, she told him, “Like when I speak Icelandic and tell you that you’re not real,” in a sweet voice.

“Like I said.” Thor’s arm snatched a cab right out to traffic. When he opened the door, he slowed in his intention of getting in. “Here. I guess I should head home.”

The decade of denial conditioned into Thor had found some fresh air. Alone at home, Thor could backslide into pretending that it was the influence of alcohol that lured him to Loki, not the love that his mistaken frontal lobe liked dungeoning, could backslide into avoiding going deep with Loki.

“Oh. Okay,” she said, eyes wider, glossier.

“I mean — I’ll be back. I have to go grab my to-go bag. Rather not get back into a suit tomorrow morning.”

“Vali and Narvi will attack you — again — if you try to move them when they get comfortable in bed, so I’d hurry if I were you.”

Vali and Narvi already had gotten themselves comfortable when Loki promised them their living hot bottle would be back to cuddle. Their eyes held Loki to that as she rubbed the last bit of moisturizer into her forearm, empowering her skin to be its most irresistibly soft.

Not that Thor’d get hands-on experience with that restraint that’d been totally absent the last Loki had opened her door for him in clothes this sheer and short. In comfortwear, Thor, duffel on his shoulder, looked but didn’t touch, remarking, “Smells nice,” to the fallout of her fragrances like that would’ve turned her around do what Thor’s homegrown courage couldn’t.

It was to Thor’s surprise that Loki stopped at the guest bedroom’s door and opened it.

“I’d tell you where everything is, but you already know.”

Make or break, Thor. Could he do it without his wingman Tequila, or was sober Thor just not up to par to risk the “no” he’d brainwashed himself into believing was all that separated him from his dreams?

She bored of her staredown with Thor’s pecs and Adam’s apple.

“Taking that to mean you won’t kill me for using your deep conditioner” followed her step for step. And there Thor was blindly pushing Loki’s bedroom door shut when she not only settled her waiting babies’ worries but brought them a little — oxymoronic anywhere on or in regard to Thor’s person — something extra.

Thor’s duffel took a seat for the one-handed strip show that netted pan-seared beefcake. A fair price for the imposing.

“I can only speak for myself,” she replied. “You’ll have to see about them individually.”

Narvi meowed an “about time” at her settling herself in bed next to them while Vali got about scenting her arm. They’d never attack the treat-dispensing heater. But Thor didn’t know that.

“Maybe if I smell like you”—“boing” went Thor’s big, veiny semi in celebration from its freedom from Thor’s trackies—“they’ll think twice about it.”

Narvi and Vali had one hand reserved for pets. The other helped her enjoy the imagery of Thor just yards away sudsing himself up, pleading pink cock most of all, thinking of Loki’s tight body in her tissue paper nightie, how he could copycat last Tuesday on her, in her with that throbbing, dribbling organ-shifter, orgasming his ass sallow and clenched in thick, white cum all over his mechanic knuckles and her shower.

Post-orgasm clarity Thor, left of the center of sober Thor, turned the glow behind her eyelids off. He brought only a heated, woodsier version of her nighttime self, no tit squeezes.

This was “down 500 grand in Vegas but threw in another 250 to somehow make back 10 times that” Thor.

When the curtains soaked her in bright sunlight and Thor, clothes free and sat up but not yet at ‘em, looked to see her as disheveled as it got, as Thor would know better than anyone, that urge that handed the teller Thor’s card eclipsed the sun with Thor and the eyes he had on her lips.

Without Jack D. and Jose C. joining in, Thor's lips intentionally cannibalized Loki's instead of incidentally. Tried to. His lips could’ve been doused in lighter fluid, and they’d have been no less infuriatingly kissable, so sleep wasn’t stopping Loki.

The piping hot handful of cock pleased a hum from Thor’s mouth to hers. Her polishing of the tacky, wet head brought Thor’s guard down for her to push the warm weight of him over onto his back. 

It was dawning on Thor uncharacteristically passively watching her strip off her nightie and get her barely resistant pussy up to speed with two fingers and a thumb that all he’d had to do all this time was get over himself and get under her.

A clit tweak gasped one of those sounds out of her, snapping Thor out of it to show some sucking, bitey enthusiasm and reassure her his sober hands appreciated the honor of touching her anywhere and everywhere.

Using up all the cock Thor had to fill herself up, it wasn’t anywhere near the bottom of her life’s callings, and Thor and the cables of muscle in his neck reserving themselves a last-minute appointment with her mouth had providing it to her right near Thor’s top.

They’d been staring strategy and compromises at each other in conference rooms in prep for the fuck of few words, an odd “fuck,” “yeah? Right there?” but they let the slap of his balls and thighs against her ass and squelch of her hole around his cock do the talking her moans and his groans didn’t cover. 

Thor spitting on his middle finger touched her clit before Thor’s spitty middle finger did. The brutality of Thor’s grinding had her bracing with muscle tit and climaxing around Thor’s cock’s leaps.

When she let herself down to recover, Thor’s heartbeat knocked against her cheek.

Tiny needles threatened her back with roughened paw pads, and Loki and Thor got a “Meow,” arguably the worst, a meow of impatience.

Thor didn’t know better to not laugh. “If you wait till after round two, there’s a good treat in it.”

“Oh, the real treat is the scent of cat piss that lingers a month after,” she said, displacing Narvi off her back and Thor’s persisting, cum-dipped semi from her pussy. “How awful it still manages to smell is an absolute delight.”

She kept her floors clean letting her two weapons of mass olfactory destruction out and kegeling through feeding them. It staggered her morning prep for life with Thor’s, avoided the elbow-bumping at the sink that her hair-trigger blush reflex wouldn’t have resisted. No cartoon hearts in her eyes for Thor to reassure himself with. 

The mug of coffee would’ve let Thor’s eyes get away with “easygoing” if there hadn’t been all those Friday nights. “Brought my beans,” said Thor, holding up the bag. “So you can get used to the quality.”

She jostled his pancakes for him. “I think I’m in a tea mood actually.”

Thor had more work to do.


	9. Last Time

Thor’s mystical coffee beans moved into the cabinet above the coffee machine for Thor to reach up — flashing tan hip that was going to rub off onto the insides of her knees from the Friday, Saturday, an odd Sunday, maybe a Tuesday or two — Wednesday, a frequently Thursdays — nights and mornings — and dump his divine beans into the grinder, first hers, then the burr one that came a Wednesday because “blade grinders are settling, and I don’t settle.”

Quod erat demonstrandum, the bloating red unread notifications in Thor’s messages that Loki could see out of the corner of her eye, the kissy and winky faces that drifted into the unread abyss below the retired good timers and herself when Thor’s excessive phone calls for questions that could’ve been typed were ignored.

Club? Bar? Lounge? Loki’s — no, Loki. Because it was her that drew Thor to her doorway, not the pewter walls in the halls as thoughtful as they were. Otherwise, Thor wouldn’t have reversed his coat shrug when she told him she was off to pizza or asked her in his command way, “Let’s go for a walk,” in the middle of the workday.

It wasn’t terrible. Thor wasn't insufferable when he was sober of alcohol and asshole. The latter, that wasn't completely possible given that it was knit into his DNA, but the texture of asshole — more snark and cheek — complemented Loki's own natural streak of asshole.

Because Thor was "kind" in the help a dejected guy move a couch on the sidewalk sense, but "nice" misaligned with Thor calling someone an ostrich for a quite frankly bad but not terrible idea or going "hm" at a seat filler's grandpa's death. All of that stubbly charm had everyone thinking otherwise, but Loki knew better, and better was funny.

Who needed planks when you had the held-n laughter over Thor’s implacable skepticism toward the interior designer — a client referral — and their orange obsession? “Do you know anyone whose specialty isn’t orange?” Delightful.

Don Julio had been the whisper in Thor’s ear to not give in but to keep his guard up around Loki, but without Mr. Julio, slowly, surely, Thor was touching the large of his hand to the small of her back through doors and murmuring in a non-dickish tone into her ear in meetings. 

He'd not leapt the chasm of kissing her when they weren't in her bed — or the couch once, no, twice — and insulated by the Egyptian cottony bubble of sleep time. Disappointing. But unsurprising. Thor's fear of Loki's "no" where this was involved was chronic.

Her answering Thor's pleading stares at her mouth when they waiting for lunch at her apartment, at the espresso machine in office, in art house theaters, that would've been the easy way out.

Loki didn't need Thor. Thor needed Loki. That was the truth.

She went to Thor's office out of choice because his guest chairs had the corner office view, which was a change from hers. Nothing to do with needing Thor. Absurd.

"Let's go to the fair," said Thor. Because his assistant had mentioned going last weekend "on a date" — which Thor didn't correct this wasn't funnily — and had won "the smallest little bear for his girlfriend. It was shameful."

All that extrospection, no intro-. Thor following Loki to her apartment to one part change from his suit, one part feed Loki’s eyes what was under it — back dimples and lats and abs and all one could eat — to tuck in to one of the overcast gray sweatshirts hanging in the sliver and drawer Loki conceded in her closet should’ve stopped Thor to think, “I’m a lot closer to Loki than I’m pretending, no?” Normal people would’ve thought that closing the drawer they’d pulled jeans from — even with the seductive reflection of Loki slithering into black skinnies. But not Thor.

He thought instead, “Let me put Loki’s bra on Vali and Narvi’s heads like hats.” Pleased with the disbelief her babies were in that the space-heater-treat-man would dare, he said, “Not like you were using it anymore.”

After taking a picture — because it was already there — Loki saved her bra from evisceration. “If you want to find out the limit of treats, leave my clothes out of it.”

“So, I should empty all your bras out for them to play with. Understood. Because bras are not clothes. No, they’re shackles.” Thor leaned down to her chest and said, “See, don’t you love freedom?” He nodded. “They do.”

She had a squeeze of grade A boy tit. “Yours being the experts.”

If Thor weren’t a coward, he’d have kissed her. Backed her up against the shoes, the two of them mouth-to-mouth, and let his hands split up, one north, one south, while she fit one of hers into all that extra room in Thor’s jeans. But Thor didn’t. Because he was.

Thor had all of that bravery and couldn’t spare some to kiss Loki with the lights on so to speak?

That wouldn’t do. Her lights-off fuck from the slab of Norse bro waiting for her back home wasn’t what either of them needed, least of all Thor. This… repression was harming him when Thor was a wild animal with engorged balls that needed to bukkake the world. Loki couldn’t to drop to her knees and transfuse her blood for Thor’s cum because that’d defeat the purpose, but she could metaphorically — could guide the rest of Thor attached to that ubiquitous hand above her ass toward Super Shot and skee ball and key him up with her gray area tactics (“Cheating. You’re cheating”) and release him to the douchebag boyfriends and sorority girls that, mistakenly, judged Thor as someone who was not insane.

Thor humiliated them and their cheerleaders with his toothpaste billboard grin, and afterward, he shook their limp hands afterward and patted their lame shoulders and told them, “Better luck next time” and “Good try” without an ounce of humility.

“You can still close the deal after all.” Loki turned her head in time for her favorite wrinkles between Thor’s eyebrows. “That’s a relief.”

“Still? When don’t I close a deal?”

She had a feel of Thor’s invincible arm. “Evidently not here.”

Thor redeemed three-quarters of their thousands of tickets into a voucher because they were coming back he decided, the dazed 20-something’s mention of a broken ticket record not deterrent, and politely left a quarter for two mood rings, mass-produced junk that’d be an outlier in her jewelry collection, a striking prime for the backdrop of hazy incandescent light bulbs that Thor’s odd flyaway caught against the sky that was as dark as it got near the city. One went on her right ring finger and the other went the only place it’d fit, on Thor’s pinkie. It was solid through her shirt as Thor commandeered Loki’s waist to be her GPS to the funnel cake and in a bid to get closer, molding himself to her, excess heat and Tom Ford.

“You’re a lucky guy,” Dude Bro informed Thor.

Thor might not have cared to reply, but Loki said over both their shoulders to Dude Bro, who’d pivoted to get the only side of Loki he deserved, “He’s very aware.”

Thor almost tripped her pushing her forward.

“Forget the rings. We should’ve gotten you a sense of humor. Oh, the horror, someone thinks I’m the prize in this relationship.” She handled ordering their funnel cake, extra-large, powdered and buttered.

“‘Relationship.’ Thought we didn’t have one of those.”

“Relationship,” Loki repeated. “What? Was association a better word? Cooperative?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What was it you meant then?”

Nothing that Thor would tell her before he had something, in this case the pier railing, to hold onto for support. As far as deep-fried heart disease sprinkled in diabetes was, the funnel cake hit the spot, but Thor breaking off too-large a piece and deferring half of it to her and watching her teeth bite through it, her tongue clear off the oil and powdered sugar from her lips like it was a pressing concern of his elevated it to a new level of delicious.

“Think of all the funnel cakes you could’ve had,” she said, “if you’d chosen Chateau Loki over the Stumble Inn.” She crumbled the carton the funnel cake had come in and aimed and scored at the bin a pace away. If that wasn’t indicative.

The black in Thor’s mood ring shimmered in the fair’s light overflow.

“Tyrian Purple. That’s the color you should do your bedroom,” Loki said. 

Thor turned. Thor kissed her.

Cinnamon prevailed, gum Thor'd popped preemptively for this, the dork in stealth. A dork piped into a body that might’ve been an incursion of another reality, lensing space-time to permit her to feel the short parts of Thor’s beard finding her pores, the longer strands tickling, Thor’s lips contour around hers, tip of his nose nudge into her cheek, chest to her chest, legs to her legs. Thor was pulling her in to his alt dimension where Thor was matter itself. He was the sustained bliss of lying in September’s grass with nowhere to be.

When their lips weren’t touching, their faces and bodies were, where she could see Thor’s beard slip into the invisible follicles and his decades of smiles starting to preempt his skin.

“Tyrian it is then,” she told Thor’s eyes.

“Hope that cleared it up for you. That this is a relationship.” He got distracted by her lips for a moment. Understandable. “Commitment and all of that.”

“I was just checking that we were on the same page.”

“Well, we are.”

“Good.” She tugged Thor’s coat. “Come on. I want cotton candy.”

From Casamigos to cotton candy kisses. Good for Thor.


End file.
